Iran's reformists won a huge victory in the country's elections, but there's a big catch

Iran's reformists are cheering the results of the Islamic
Republic's elections, held on Sunday in what was widely seen as a
referendum on President Hassan Rouhani's more moderate policies
that have ushered in an opening with the West.

Final election tallies showed that candidates on the reformist
ticket — who espouse a political movement aimed at changing
Iran's system to include more freedom and democracy — won
27% of the overall vote and gained roughly 30 parliamentary
seats in the Tehran constituency,
Reuters reported.

Reformists also won 15 out of 16 seats allocated for Tehran in
the Assembly of Experts, which is tasked with choosing the
republic's next supreme leader afterAyatollah Ali
Khamenei.

But many analysts are skeptical that the reformists' electoral
success — deemed by many as a blow to the republic's hardliners —
was as significant or decisive as it seems.

"This was a win by centrists — particularly President
Rouhani — with some reformist window dressing," geopolitical
expert Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk firm Eurasia
Group, told Business Insider on Monday.

And Amir Toumaj, an Iran expert at the Washington, DC-based
think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noted
in an interview that "while it is true that the
reformist-backed ticket gained seats in the elections, this
shouldn't be declared a victory for reformists."

"The radicals had dealt the final blow
to the reformists even before the ballots were open," Toumaj told
Business Insider on Monday.

That is because candidates running on the reformist ticket
were not necessarily reformists, he said. Roughly 80% of the
Assembly's around 800 contenders were disqualified from running
in the elections by clerics appointed to the hardline Guardian
Council by Khamenei, leaving the reformists little choice but to
form a coalition with "less-hardline hardliners" — who call
themselves moderates — to have a chance at winning seats.

"The reformists and pragmatist camps formed an alliance with what
they think are some of the 'less-hardline hardliners,'" Toumaj
said. "But this should not be interpreted as the softening of the
radicals' zealotry."

"The radical officials on that ticket do not support the
reformist agenda. Some literally have the reformists' blood on
their hands," he added. "According to reformist figures and
many Iranians, their options were between bad and worse."

Bremmer, of the Eurasia Group, noted that the limited selection
of candidates, many of them hand-picked, was not surprising.

"A big win by actual reformists would likely be perceived as a
mortal threat to the theocracy and would more likely be quashed,
violently if necessary," he said. "Iran elections
are hardly free and fair. It's a Hong Kong-like system, with an
antidemocratic process determining who gets to run."

Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow
at the FDD, put it bluntly in
an analysis of the electoral process published last week:
"The only candidates allowed to run were those deemed to
pose no challenge to the ruling hardline
establishment."

Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani.Thomson
Reuters

Still, the relative electoral success of the moderate-reformist
ticket was undoubtedly a testament to the public's
dissatisfaction with the hardliners who continue to dominate the
country's political institutions, and 62% came out to vote.

Bremmer, for his part, remained optimistic.

"We shouldn't underestimate the importance of the elections
... there's big support for the nuclear deal, and
while the Iranian economy will likely contract this year, there's
a lot of optimism about the future," he said. "Andthe hardliners — the ones who were most skeptical of the
nuclear deal and an Iran opening to the West — didn't do well at
all."

"For the citizens and Iran and those who would hope to
engage them," he added, "this was a positive outcome."

Supporters
of Hassan Zamani, a candidate in Friday's
elections.Raheb
Homavandi/Reuters

But Toumaj cautioned Westerners not to read too much into
the election results, noting that radicals still dominate the
Assembly of Experts, the Guardian Council, and the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps — an ideologically driven
militia that controls virtually every aspect of Iranian society
under the watchful eye of the ayatollah.

"The focus by much of the US media on the electoral process
assumes that the reformists can somehow overcome the unelected
institutions dominated by radicals," Toumaj said. "In Iran, the
deep state — which will survive beyond Khamenei — can undo the
reformists overnight."